Here & Now
by Wandering Leo
Summary: "Not There & Then." The struggles of a mutant raised to think of herself as a Godlike figure and the damage that's done to her psychologically. Will she be able to break away the imposed thought and move on or will she be stuck thinking of herself as a figurehead to a forsaken God?
1. Chapter 1

_Louisiana, 1987  
A young couple brave the bizarre weather, the streets reek of rotting seaweed and salt, rain and ocean water pelt the two as they walk briskly from shanty house to shanty house, a bundle is held in the young mothers arms, she holds it with an air of contempt.  
_  
_The water on the poor cobbled streets is raising slowly, the couple swashes as it reaches their ankles, the wind picks up violently and the mother has half a mind to drop the bundle and be done with it. The young father is horrified at the idea, he takes the bundle and his young wife's hand and leads her towards his mother home. A large dingy old plantation home further ahead._

_A short figure stands by the gate, his mother. She is hunched and of creole decent, just like her son._

_"The Gods are angry." The nana whispers, accepting the bundle without a second glance at her soaked son and daughter in law, "This is a blessing within a blessing."  
_  
_The son nods and the daughter in law feels tears sting her eyes, and she does not know why. The two part and the nana disappears down the long pathway to her home. The bundle shrieks as loud as the wind._

New York, Present Day

Two figures crouched in the field of cattails and reeds of Southern Westchester's Long Island Sound. They were a long ways away from the glowing jungle of concrete and steel that was New York City. Far away from any more backup if things went sour with this mission.

The marsh land of Long Island Sound kept the two covered as they staked out David's Island. The unoccupied island had served as a military base a few years back and seems to be the target for squatters. They've been getting reports that a certain organization has been showing quite an interest in the rocky land.

The smaller of the two, a women, laid on her stomach in the tall reeds, binoculars covering a good deal of her face. She watched the island vigilantly while her partner complained at her side.

"Vendetta, when you told me we'd be rolling around in the mud this wasn't what I pictured. This is just awful."

Perhaps bringing him along wasn't the smartest move on her part, but she needed someone she trusted watching her six. As crazy as it sounds, she trusted the man at her side more than any agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. Still...

The infamous merc with a mouth did have a point.

"I know, Wade."

Bernadette, Vendetta was more so a nickname, signed impatiently as she lowered the binoculars. David's Island was still visible on the horizon, barely.

"What's with all the busy work anyway? Isn't that usually for interns?" Wade spoke absently, he was too preoccupied with trying to balance his trench knife off his pointer finger.

"Something about proving my worth before they initiate me into the Avengers program,"

At least, something like that. Fury had debriefed her on the situation once but, she had other things on her mind at the time. She wasn't even one hundred percent sure why he insisted she proved herself, she wouldn't be the first mutant joining the Avengers.

"Why don't you just go freelance like I did? Pays good, you choose your own jobs, you get to kill a lot of people." Wade dropped the knife and caught it on his boot, "And the team-ups come with all kinds of perks."

In fact the perks with teaming up with Bernadette included a free ride and stopping for drive-through on the way home. Which was a great end to a horrible mission.

Bernadette took a sharp breath through her nose, the only time she had ever killed someone was in self defense when she was working alone and she ended up incarcerated by the MRD. She wasn't exactly eager to get into that life of vigilante justice again.

That's why she was trying to make her way into the Avengers, she needed those in a team to help her make the right moral dissension. She didn't like to admit to it but she can't make her own. After her mishap the first time she doubted the X-Men would even take her back, well, they might but they wouldn't respect her like they did. Probably, she left so fast she couldn't really say.

"You know I can't do that," Bernadette turned to face Wade and froze.

She didn't see a man garbed in black and red at her side, she saw nothing but the endless sea of reeds and cattails. Wade was tall, even if he was crouching she'd surly see him or his katanas poking through the maze.

She was utterly alone.

"Deadpool?"

Using real names was too risky, what if something happened? What if someone snagged him? She slowly brought herself to her knees, reaching for the gun at her hip.

A hand gripped her wrist hard and she hissed in surprise, she wouldn't scream, she wasn't up to giving who ever this was that kind of satisfaction. Bernadette felt her body turn numb, she was putting herself into defense mode.

An inky off black with an under hue of blue coated her skin, she could feel her body take on the translucence of her mutation, her ability to become ethereal. It also made her skin icy to the touch, even when it wasn't active, and prone to put other in a brief state of paralysis if touched.

The hand released her at once. Bernadette turned towards the owner fists raised, ready to fight, only to sigh in a mix of relief and disbelief.

Wade held his limp hand with the other and smiled behind his mask, "See? You have the reflexes to make it on your own."

Bernadette stared with glassy, off red eyes. She was still in a defensive stance.

"What's got your panties in a knot? You got a abandonment issues?"

Bernadette's eyes widened.

_Louisiana, 1996_  
_  
A young girl stands at the gate of her grandmothers plantation house. She wears black, just as the others attending her grandmothers funeral are. She had ran from the ceremony as she spotted her parents. It shouldn't have upset her as much as it did that they had a new child, they hadn't wanted her._  
_  
"Bernadette?"_  
_  
Her fathers voice._  
_  
Bernadette looks up at him, tears stain her cheeks. She asks the question that all who are attending the funeral are thinking, "Where will I go now?"_  
_  
Her father looks incredibly uncomfortable at the question, he furrows his brow and hesitantly holds out his hand, "Let's just...get you back to the ceremony, Bernadette."_  
_  
Bernadette takes her fathers hand and he falls to the ground. She stares in horror as her mother screams, running up to the gates with her five year old son. Her fathers eyes move wildly in his head looking around, wondering what had happened. He had felt a cold chill before collapsing and now he was unable to move._  
_  
Bernadette has never ran so fast in her life. By the time she stopped she was at the pier overlooking the sea and was contemplating jumping in and letting the waves take her._  
_  
She would have too, had a voice told her not to. A man was speaking to her but she couldn't see him, he told her to take a step back and a breath, his name was Charles Xavier and he would help her get through this. _  
_  
Bernadette sat at the pier and waited for him like he'd asked. _

Wade sounded sincere but Bernadette's heart was still pounding from the shock of being left alone and it left her fuming.

"Edaw, on."

A side effect of the mutation, she could only speak backwards in this form.

"You know I can't understand you when you use that Devil speak."

The inky off blue melted from her mouth.

"Shut up, Wade."

{Authors Note; I pray I'm not biting off more than I can chew with this, here's hoping I can update it regularly.}


	2. Chapter 2

The sun was just beginning to set as the two began the long trek home, off tones of orange and fuchsia were soon cloaked with deep purples and blues. The sun was sinking and the sky would soon erupt with stars. Well, it would if not for the lavished lights of the city. Some preferred the artificial glow to the real thing, those people lived life with one eye closed.

Bernadette watched the road with dead eyes as she drove along the highway, the stark beauty of the setting sun a mere glare in the distance. She had...other things working there way around her mind.

_Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, 1996_

_Bernadette was seated on an examination table. The room was stark white and a cool reassuring grey. They had told her they would be doing a few tests and she was waiting for the results. She felt numb but wanted in the school of mutants._

_The thought of suicide at such a young age wasn't common in the least bit and Professor Xavier feared for her mental health. He could pick and prod till he found the answer but she wouldn't consent to that. She hadn't said much of anything since she arrived to the large school._

_Doctor Hank McCoy had ran a few psychological tests to see where she stood mentally, he received some bothersome answers. Best to start with the easier news first._

_They hadn't known at the time that she could hear every world they were saying in the next room. And she listened intently._

_"She's developed auto-phobia."_

_"It's expected, Hank, after what she's been through I wouldn't expect anything les-"_

_"There's something else, Charles."_

She almost missed the turn had Wade not grabbed for the wheel. She also almost hit the car to her right had the honks not jolted her from her thoughts.

"Damn'it don't do that!"

She hissed, swinging at Wade with her right hand. Had he not been busy flipping off the other motorist and yelling muffled profanities she would have made contact. Instead she managed to faultier, almost colliding with the car in front of her.

The honks all around her echoed five times louder than they were, even Wade asking what the hell that was about seemed like a chairs scrapping off of worn tile floor.

Bernadette quickly turned off the highway and into the turnpike that led to various hotels, truck-stops and eateries, pulled off to the side of the road and parked. She still held onto the wheel with shaky hands and rested her forehead against it. She was in no mood to drive right now.

_"Where had that come from?"_ She questioned herself, knowing Wade wouldn't know what she was talking about. She may tell him a lot but not everything, certainly not everything.

She felt sick and feverish, she hadn't had that memory in years not since...not since she was found.

"Bernadette?"

He seldom used her real name, only when he was furious or serious. Neither happened often and it seemed to surprise him as much as it did Bernadette.  
But, this whole situation was surprising, sure, Bernadette would have her episodes but this was a new women, at least, as far as Wade knew. The gal was charismatic or reclusive when she needed to be.

"Yes, Wade?"

She looked up at him with tired eyes and spoke in a small worn voice. The facade was down, this was the broken girl that Bernadette's been since her childhood, she never grew out of it. She just hid it from those she called  
friends.

Wade watched her for a moment, watched and saw what she really was and thought better than to ask what he'd planned on asking.

"I'm worried for you, what's the eta on some drive-through? We could both use some glucose in our systems after almost dying twice."

Bernadette smiled lightly, humor was Wade's secret weapon and it almost always worked on her. Almost, the smile never reached her eyes, "Don't worry about it, doesn't matter."

She put the car into drive and headed towards the nearest fast-food restaurant, "Let's just stuff our faces and forget about it."

The facade was back.

_Xaviers School for Gifted Youngsters, 1996_

_"She answered these in third person, referring to herself only as the Void."_

_Hank shuffled the papers in his hands before coming across the correct document and passing it to Xavier. He, in turn, repeated the alias thoughtfully, it suited her._

_"The rest each have very atypical results and this, well," Hank held up on final test and read from it, "'I am not many, I am one, I was born in the void between all the dimensions only existing in the ones I please, I've been born many times and I've died countless more.' What do you make of that?"_

_Xavier pondered this lightly, wanting desperately to understand the child immediately but, she needed coaxing, that much was clear, "She was in a dark place when I found her, Hank. Given her situation this seems like an out for what she experienced."_

_"If I didn't know better, Charles, I'd say she just left a cult."_

_Bernadette felt like crying from her perch, those were the words her nana told her everyday since her birth. She never saw them as an 'out' or some sort of cultist saying. That was simply how her nana explained her gift. A gift that didn't seem so Godly anymore._

"Had I known you'd freak out I wouldn't have teased you," Wade held up his right hand, shoveling fries down his gullet with the other, "Scouts honor."

The two had parked in the nearly empty parking lot of the fast food joint, it wasn't as poorly lit as the other parking lots and that gave Bernadette a small sense of security. Enough, it appeared to draw back another memory.

"You've never been a scout a day in your life," Bernadette mused as she sat against the windshield of her Volkswagen, she had been watching the sky in a daze moments before, "And I told you, it doesn't matter."

Nothing does.

Wade chose to drop the subject, he'd try again when she was good and ready, no use both of them being off the deep end. Neither could function without a brake.

"When's S.H.I.E.L.D. sending you back out to wallow in the mud and watch nothing?"

"Tomorrow night," Bernadette sighed lightly, "I could use some company for the graveyard shift, Wade, you in?"

"I can't say no to a pretty girl with cash, I'm like a tomcat that way."


End file.
